Actress Lindsay Lohan was sentenced to 90 days in jail today. Intrepid Gawker intern Molly…
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More than anything, TMZ's largely Lohan-free live stream was an accidental National Geographic special on the feeding habits of paparazzi. In fact, most of their footage was of one another: milling around, scratching themselves, generally looking impatient. To understand just how little editorial control is applied to this live footage, consider that a disembodied voice was allowed to (repeatedly) plug the Funny or Die videos of someone named Drew Richards. "You haven't seen funny unless you have seen Drew Richards," he droned. If his monotone is any indication of the laffs in store, I'll pass.

Then, finally, a black SUV and a male shriek: "There she is!" Immediately, the photographers shifted from quiet chitchat to a fratty Greek chorus of "Linds! You look great!" She indulged none of them.

After a besunglassed LiLo darted inside, TMZ's frame was filled with paparazzi jockeying for a better shot through the courthouse window—the camera's gaze shifted to its operators. Take that paper topic and run with it, Media Studies majors.

Inside the courtroom, the old gang was reunited. Judge Marsha Revel presided before Lohan's attorney Shawn Chapman Holley and Deputy D.A. Danette Meyers. And within just five minutes, it was all over. Lohan didn't cry. Revel plowed through the details—Lindsay is now to report to rehab within 24 hours of her prison release, with no chance of work release or house arrest—before announcing that no photography of Lohan being cuffed and taken into custody would be permitted. Ah, the sweet taste of anticlimax.

Nevertheless, the audio briefly stayed on, and the menacing clanking of metal didn't leave much to the imagination-either Lindsay was cuffed or Jacob Marley arrived to testify as a character witness. Revel interrogated a courtroom photographer with the technological acumen of a seasoned AOL user: "And that's not pointing towards her? And you're not taking pictures?"

Back outside, TMZ's live stream kept rolling. Horns honked, paparazzi made casual conversation, and a protester in a pink, homemade "Free Lindsay" T-shirt waved a sign with the same slogan. "Scream one more time," a man with a video camera instructed him, and the demonstrator obliged: "Greatest actress of my generation and everyone else's! She just loves cocaine!"

A television reporter approached Pink Shirt Guy—who reminds me vaguely of a Nick Swardson character—with a microphone. "What TV are you with?" he asked her. A star was born. [TMZ, Images via Getty]